Trump makes baseless claim that he lost the popular vote only because 'millions' voted illegally

President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday suggested a mysterious
bloc of millions of "illegal" voters cast ballots for Democratic
candidate Hillary Clinton on Election Day, costing him the
popular vote.

Clinton is likely to defeat Trump in the popular vote by over 2
million votes.

"In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I
won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who
voted illegally," Trump
wrote in a tweet Sunday, without providing any factual
evidence to support his claim.

Various far-right sites known for peddling false or misleading
information, like the conspiracy-riddled InfoWars, claimed after
the election that close to 3 million votes were cast by
immigrants living in the US illegally. The fact-checking websites
PolitiFact,
Factcheck.org, and
Snopes have all ruled that there is no evidence of widespread
voter fraud.

Trump furthered the accusation on Sunday night by saying in
a subsequent tweet that there was "serious voter fraud" in
Virginia, New Hampshire, and California. No evidence of voter
fraud in those states has surfaced.

This isn't the first time Trump has indulged his conspiratorial
impulses about supposed voter fraud. Before the election, the
president-elect frequently claimed that immigrants living in the
US without permission were voting, constituting a "massive
problem," despite
providing no credible evidence to support his claim.

And despite lacking strong evidence, he
also alleged voter fraud in the Florida Republican
presidential primary and the Iowa caucuses. He too floated
several different conspiracy theories claiming "dead voters"
supported President Barack Obama's reelection in 2012.

It also came as Wisconsin officials prepared for a possible
recount of the state's presidential election initiated by a
request from Jill Stein, the Green Party nominee. The Clinton
campaign said it would participate in the recount, though it said
it had not found "actionable evidence" of voting irregularities
or hacking. It also suggested it didn't expect results to change.